Heavy military vehicles such as military transport trucks and troop carriers typically incorporate massive steel chassis and suspension components, and such vehicles typically have powerful engines. Where such vehicles are used for ground operations within hostile territories which present a risk of ballistic projectile attack, such vehicles are known to be protectively adapted to include an outer cladding or covering of heavy ballistic armoring material. The installation of such outer protective stratums upon such heavy military vehicles typically results in no unacceptable degradation of the performance of the vehicle. However, the typical acceptability of addition of armor to military land vehicles is not equally experienced when the vehicle is adapted for amphibious operations.
While military amphibious vehicles, like military land vehicles, are typically capable of carrying very heavy exterior armor during land based operations, such armor often undesirably detracts from and degrades the performance of amphibious vehicles during use upon the water. Such degradation of performance may arise as the result of the typically high density relative to water of applied cladding layers of armoring materials. Accordingly, upon installation of armoring materials to the exterior surfaces of the hull of a military amphibious vehicle, the vehicle runs deeper in the water and its unloaded water line rises. As a result, installation of outer cladding armor over the hull of an amphibious military vehicle degrades the vehicle's capacity for carrying troops and cargo.
The instant inventive assembly for armoring amphibious vehicles solves or ameliorates problems discussed above by adapting an applied and installed armoring strata to dually function as a projectile spall generating strike face and for increasing the buoyancy of both the armor and the amphibious vehicle.